Head-to-head comparison
Aion-3.0-Mini (Aion Labs) and Gemma 3 12B (Google) compared on the ModelCap Index, API price, context window, provider availability, weight access and every public benchmark board they share. Figures are the same ones shown on the live rankings; nothing here is a hidden score.
Snapshot as of 18 August 2026
As of 18 August 2026, Aion-3.0-Mini holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#114 vs #175); and Gemma 3 12B is 9.3× cheaper per output token ($0.15/1M vs $1.40/1M).
Evidence: global corpus prior · leave-one-anchor-out calibrated · 3 public benchmark observations across 3 boards. Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.
Scores are the sources' own published figures for each model's best evaluated configuration; ModelCap never re-runs a benchmark.
Want a different pairing? Open the interactive comparison tool to swap either model for any current ranked language model.
Aion-3.0-Mini ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 18 August 2026: #114 against #175. That is a capability ranking built from public benchmark evidence with published uncertainty; whether it is "better" for you also depends on price, context and where you can run it.
Gemma 3 12B is cheaper on output tokens: $0.15/1M against $1.40/1M. Input tokens are $0.70/1M for Aion-3.0-Mini and $0.05/1M for Gemma 3 12B. Prices are the lowest listed API offer ModelCap observed, in USD per million tokens.
Both publish a 131K-token context window.
The two models do not share a coding benchmark board on ModelCap yet, so no head-to-head coding score is published; the ModelCap Index position is the closest overall signal.
Aion-3.0-Mini: API only. Gemma 3 12B: Gated access. Open weights mean the checkpoint can be downloaded and self-hosted under its licence; API-only models are available solely through hosted endpoints.
ModelCap currently lists 1 API provider for Aion-3.0-Mini and 1 for Gemma 3 12B, from the OpenRouter catalogue snapshot the site serves; each model page lists the providers and their prices.
Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 18 August 2026; the page re-renders within a minute of each data refresh, and the ModelCap Index positions are the same ones shown on the live rankings.